


Ten of Swords, Reversed

by tainry



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Sparks, Swearing, WAFF, fieldplay, mention of hatchlings, mild pnp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 03:36:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5769763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tainry/pseuds/tainry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A kiss and make it better fic, taking place directly after the events of DotM.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten of Swords, Reversed

**Author's Note:**

> Hodge-podge of the novel and the film. Salad bar! Take what you want, leave the rest. A slight but important bait and switch in casting. Muwaha! Suggested listening for the last section: The World In A Grain of Sand by Andreas Vollenweider.   
> Especially for mmouse15 - ♥   
> I am deeply grateful for the mad betaing skills of the mysterious and beautiful playswithworms, the magnificent and talented lycanthrophile and the amazing and eldritch femme4jack!

_**Triage** : [Fr. “sorting”]. The sorting out and classification of the wounded who have been brought to a field hospital. _

Wheeljack first. Bless his triply and quadruply redundant systems. If Ratchet could get enough of the important pieces back together they could at least preserve his spark in deep stasis. Wheeljack was a sturdy mech; eighteen connections repaired would do it.

"Bring Mirage closer," he told Sideswipe. "Place his head in apposition." He ignored the jagged, corrosive void slowly consuming his own spark. _I’ll follow you, beloved. I'll follow. I just need a little more time._ Seventeen more connections. Mirage's spark pulsed irregularly. Ratchet estimated he had 4.7 minutes to work on Wheeljack before he’d have to start on Mirage. Sixteen. “That’s completely burnt out, has to be replaced.” He yanked the piece, tossed it aside and pulled another out of his own torso. Sideswipe dragged Mirage’s body next to Wheeljack’s and settled the head as though it were still attached. 

Fifteen. Mikaela came pelting up out of the drifting smoke and ruin. 

“Ratchet! What can I do?” She leaned on an intact bit of Mirage’s shoulder, squinting into the mess of his severed neck. The macroscopic splices she could do; except connecting the peripheries when the mains were cut would cause problems. Damn, there was energon _everywhere_. She could weld the structural cables back into place, but wasn’t sure if that would obstruct something Ratchet would have to get at later. She knew enough to feel the immense shadow of things she didn’t know looming. 

“Leave Mirage to me,” Ratchet said absently. “Get these trunk lines reconnected – start with the ones that were just pulled loose and then fuse the torn ones.” He gestured at the gap between two sections of Wheeljack’s torso. Wheeljack’s spark was losing power, but he had to fix three more things before he could fix the thing that was causing the power drain. Fourteen. Mikaela pulled her gauntlets out of her purse and slipped them on her arms. Tools and a tiny plasma torch extended from their surfaces. She got to work. 

Eight. Ratchet shifted his position, one arm up to the elbow in Wheeljack, the other reaching for Mirage. This was tricky, but he was running out of time. Sideswipe held the head steady as Ratchet’s fingers blurred. Seven.

The flickering of Wheeljack’s spark was growing worse. Mikaela didn’t like that, but she didn’t waste breath yelling at Ratchet. He already knew. Fuck! There wasn’t enough slack in the next line and there was no way she could tug the sections closer together. She bared her teeth and moved on to the one after.

Slag. Ratchet’s sensors strobed between the two mechs, medical lasers stabbing in a downpour of red. He wasn’t going to make it. He’d have to choose; one or the other. It would have to be Mirage. Losing Wheeljack’s ingenuity and affable good humor would be devastating enough, but if Mirage died Sideswipe would fade as Ratchet himself was. He kept at it, vaguely feeling the approach of the Matrix’s glow, paying it no heed. He didn’t have the attention to spare. 

Optimus knelt. The Matrix could jumpstart a faded spark, but not rekindle one that had extinguished entirely. He had tried with Jolt and others, to no avail. The bright, sinuous shape floated above his remaining hand, leashed forces twining invisibly around his arm and chest. 

“Stay, dear friends,” Optimus murmured, lowering the point toward Mirage’s guttering spark. “Please stay.” Clouds of smoke from the burning city obscured the sun, but on the ground the onlookers flung hands over their eyes and turned their heads aside. 

With a triumphant cry, Ratchet moved both hands back onto repairing Wheeljack, gesturing Mikaela to a different section as Optimus held Mirage over the abyss, giving them all the one thing they needed most. 

…

“Primus, he’s a wreck,” Ratchet muttered, but the worst of the gaps were filled and the rest would hold until they could get back to…some base or other. “Optimus?” Ratchet moved to Mirage, and Optimus’ arm swung up and left and down again, a blue-white sun in an elliptical orbit, giving Wheeljack’s spark a little boost to be on the safe side. 

Ratchet growled softly to himself. Starscream had twisted Mirage’s head off, causing much worse damage than a clean cut. Of course. He yanked meters of tubing and wire out of his left thigh and set to replacing everything. 

…

“Mirage?”

Mirage blinked hazily up at Sideswipe and refocused. “…I feel terrible.”

“You look worse,” Sideswipe assured him.

The Army and National Guard were moving in, sweeping for stragglers. Lennox had reestablished contact with the Pentagon. Epps had called for a couple of flatbeds, but it would take time for normal trucks to get to them. Mikaela had gone looking for Optimus’ arm, Roadbuster in tow.

Optimus opened his chest to tuck the Matrix back inside. Sam watched it, head tilting, pupils dilating. 

Lennox caught Sam as his knees gave, following him to the ground. 

"No! No no no no no, don't you do this, kid! Don't you do this to us again!" Sam’s pulse beat steady and slow, his breathing shallow. 

Optimus knelt motionless, chest half open, optics dark, the wreckage of his right shoulder no longer sparking or dripping energon. The Matrix shone like a lighthouse beacon above his unmoving hand.

…

This place again. Sam stood atop a pinnacle, face to face with Optimus, the Matrix glowing between them. The other Primes ranged around; watching, silent, encouraging. 

A part of Optimus, buried under layers of things he’d become, watched the Primes with giddy exultation. The Dynasty of Primes! There were so many questions his younger, smaller self wanted to ask them. That he could still feel such awe was good. 

"Information is energy," Sam said. 

"Energy can be neither created nor destroyed," Optimus said, wonder-filled, understanding what the human meant to do. 

"But it can be redirected," Sam finished, smiling. He didn't want to lose Ratchet, too. One of the ancient Primes came closer, gestured, drawing mathematical sigils in the air, and Sam comprehended that space – distance – was no impediment. The Prime (Vector; the name appeared in Sam's mind, glyphs resonant with a strange palimpsest of incarnation) hinted things about time as well, but Sam held up his hands. "Let's not make this any more complicated..." 

At the smoldering NEST base, there were particles left, shifting in the winds stirred by fire, but enough to begin with. 

The strings and branes of spacetime remembered the tread of his feet, the timbre of his voice, the thrum of his cannons. The minds of his friends held echoes, memories. Ratchet’s spark held the greatest treasure of all, the most intimate knowledge, the very essence of who Ironhide had been. Sam felt like an intruder for half a second, then the power washed through him, binding him with Optimus, with the other Primes, and he forgot he was human. 

Matter remembered its connections. Fermions knew every state they had ever manifested. The universe wove itself into a shape it had worn until such a negligible span ago the passage did not bear contemplation. 

_The others!_ Optimus invoked, sending his awareness questing.

_Stop,_ pled a voice. A pair of voices. 

Sam turned, startled. It was hard to see in the shifting, diffuse light of this place. Two forms coalesced beside him. Obi Wan and Yoda? No. Two sparks, trailing feathery appendages. Twins? Twins! 

_Please, do not revive our shells,_ they said. _Not as we became._

Optimus nodded sadly, and Sam remembered. Arcee and her sisters had found them, tortured for who knew how long by Flatline. Reformatted, changed, damaged beyond recollection of who they’d once been. Sam blinked. Vector nodded at him. What if…?

“You sure?” Sam held out a hand to the twins. “Think about it, guys.”

…

Ironhide sat up, staring around at the half-destroyed base. _What. The. **Frag.**_

(Holding Mirage close on what had been a killing ground, Sideswipe laughed and laughed.) 

Nearby, two mechs in protoform lay where they’d died. They rose slowly, touching each other, touching their own faces in disbelief. 

“Cloudraker?” whispered one twin. The other grinned and took his hand.

“Fastlane!”

“You two!” Ironhide hauled himself to his feet. “Who the slag are you and what are you doing here?”

“What planet is this?” Fastlane asked, confused by unfamiliar gravity and a very strange, very _wet_ atmosphere. 

Ironhide rubbed at his forehelm. “Slaaaag.”

…

"Optimus!" Sam and Mikaela ran over debris and bones to where their friend had fallen. The great head turned toward them, optics flickering. 

"Energy cannot be created," Optimus murmured. "Can be ... re...directed..." His optics faded, went out. Offline, not dead. Sam could feel the enormous spark, dim and wavering. Prime would live, but he'd relinquished some of his span. He had decades left, certainly. Centuries, probably. Millennia? Maybe. 

Bee joined them, making soothing noises, patting Optimus’ helm. Sam and Mikaela leaned on each other, events finally catching up to adrenaline-exhausted bodies and minds. 

“You killed my boss, y’know,” Mikaela said, resting her head on Sam’s shoulder. 

“Nothing you wouldn’t have done in my place,” Sam said. The legalities worried him, now that he had the time to think about it. Wartime rules, right? He hoped so. Anyway it was arguably self-defense. Humanity-defense. 

“Well, _yeah_ , but now I’m out of a job.”

“I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“Yeah? How?”

Bee had a suggestion. 

Mikaela held up a suitably ornate Cybertronian gear. “I accept… Bumblebee!”

…

_Hey, Ratchet._

_Don’t you ‘Hey, Ratchet’ me!_

_Fine. What the frag happened to the base? None of the squishies will talk to me. Mendoza crossed himself and ran away. Incomprehensible creatures._

Ratchet explained. Sentinel. The space bridge. Chicago. Megatron. The end of the war, perhaps. _You missed it._

_Hrrr. I was busy. Being dead._

_You’re going to be on about that for the next half-million years, aren’t you._

_Well. I was. Just saying._

_You don’t remember a thing about it._

_…Not as such._ Ironhide lapsed into thoughtful silence. He knew he’d been dead. He’d felt a presence, an ancient power. It wasn’t hard to guess the Matrix had been involved. The weirdest part was that he’d swear he had felt _Sam_ pat his shoulder.

_Don’t stop!_ Ratchet hissed. _Keep talking…I can’t…just keep transmitting._ Optimus had shut down, and Mirage and Sideswipe were preoccupied with each other.

_All right. Don’t throw a rod. “In Polyhex did Nova Prime/A stately pleasure dome decree…”_

_Slag I hate that poem._ Jolt’s mongrel version of Coleridge’s fragmentary ode irritated Ratchet not because it was irreverent, but because it wasn’t irreverent enough. It was something they remembered Jolt by, though.

_You said keep talking. Thing has 538 stanzas. I have a five hour flight._ Another NEST team was heading for Chicago to assist in the cleanup, and said team had gotten over their heebie-jeebies enough to express that they would feel much better accompanied by an Autobot in general and Ironhide in particular. The Twins, who had in essence newly arrived, were staying in DC to help there until they understood better what was going on.

_Oh Primus. Go on, then._

~>~

They found Optimus’ arm in the river. It would have to be meticulously cleaned and dried before Ratchet would even consider putting it back on. Optimus thus shared a flatbed with Mirage on the journey to Grissom; the muddy arm cradled in his lap. He buried his face in the crook of his intact elbow on a drawn-up knee to avoid having to see the angry or shocked or pitying expressions of the occupants of the vehicles around them. Mirage reached up gingerly – wary of the awkward but necessary splints welded around his neck – and settled a hand on Optimus’ foot.

…

Mearing took a separate flight. To her credit, she’d had her jet stuffed with supplies and personnel to aid in the emergency efforts. Meanwhile, she was poised to ream Optimus a new one, tapping her fingers on her crossed arms. DC. Chicago. Chicago! It would take years, decades to rebuild. Preliminary estimates placed the human death toll at twenty-three thousand. Expected to as much as double. His fault. She’d rent a cherry picker to kick his ass personally if she thought it would do any good. 

She opened her mouth as she saw him getting off the flatbed. Then she shut it. With his shield or on it. It took her a moment to realize the filthy piece of scrap he was carrying was his missing arm. The chewing out could wait until he looked less broken. Debriefings, however, were best done as soon after an event as possible. Once Ratchet got the robots spot-welded back together, and the humans had a chance to shower and eat. 

There was a great deal of yawping going on about Ironhide. She’d seen his remains herself. There’d been nothing left of him but wilting tires and a poisonous-looking dune of rust. Yet a few hours later, there he was, trundling off a C-17, glaring at the smoke-filled northwestern horizon. 

Ratchet tackled Ironhide with a resounding crash before he’d taken three steps on the tarmac.

Feeling abruptly like a voyeur, Mearing turned away and took the phone her assistant was madly waving in her direction. 

…

_I’m sorry…I’m sorry…your poor spark!_ Ironhide opened part of his spark shielding, and Ratchet did likewise and they bashed their chests together as if that would get them closer and Ratchet used his greater mass to press Ironhide down into the macadam in all the best ways. Access jacks stabbed from their fingertips, decoding each other like it was the first time, and maybe it was, in a way. 

_We knew the risks. I would have held on for as long as they needed me, but…_

_Shut up._ Ironhide pulled Ratchet’s head down, locking their forehelms together, cranial fields – subtle shadows of the minds which created them – meshing, attaining synchronicity, their memories arranged by shared meaning rather than causation. _It doesn’t matter now. I’m here, I’m all right. In better shape than you, in fact. Who put that dent in your—_

_Never mind! Sideswipe and I already killed him._

_A pity._

“Get a room,” Lennox said as he passed them, grateful with a whole heart that he wouldn’t have to tell his little girl that she’d never see Uncle Ironhide again. Wishing his own men could also be resurrected. They’d lost forty-five on the Osprey mission alone, counting the pilots. Forty-five more letters he’d have to write. Forty-five grieving families who didn’t get their miracle, whose prayers had gone unanswered this time.

…

For medical reasons, his motor functions had not entirely been restored. Ratchet didn’t want him trying to jump around until the structural damage to his head, neck and shoulders could be properly repaired. Mirage staggered as he tried to slide off the flatbed. Sideswipe was there to catch him, but Optimus had lunged toward him, too, only to realize the impulse to reach out, to lend a steadying hand, had been sent to a dead end. And his other hand was encumbered. 

With a snarl, Optimus calculated trajectory toward an empty field and flung his severed arm in a high arc fuelled by rage. It imbedded itself a good meter in the dry, weedy ground when it landed. Energon and sparks bled from his shoulder and steam rose from his core vents, but he silently followed Mirage and Sideswipe into the open hangar set aside for them.

…

“Optimus, where’s your arm?” Mikaela had unexpectedly found a spigot and hose. She could at least give the thing a prewash. She had seen him with it earlier, but he didn’t have it now.

He stared at her blankly, as though his language programs had glitched and were trying to translate English phonemes from the Cantonese database. “…A moment,” he said finally. He walked out across the airfield, beyond the runways. Stooping, he retrieved the battered appendage and brought it to Mikaela. “Thank you.”

She decided it was kinder not to ask him how it had gotten all the way out there, and got to spraying.

~>~

_Show me._ Optimus and Sam had reconstructed him at the instant before the acid rust shell had struck.

_You don’t need to see that._

_**You** had to. **Show me.**_

Ratchet gave him access. He couldn’t bring himself to push the memory through, but he could allow Ironhide to take it from him. 

_Frag._ There had never been anything like a Geneva Convention in their war; they had never had a culture of relinquishment when it came to technology. He almost wished there had been. That Sentinel had used such a weapon. _Sentinel._ Ironhide was glad Optimus had slagged him. Sorry that Optimus had had to be the one to do it, but it had needed doing. 

Ratchet clung to him, shuddering. _I…I think Optimus might have tried to kill himself, bringing you three back. He used energy from his own spark. A lot of it. He now reads as millions of years older than he is._

“He WHAT?!”

Ratchet bounced a fist off Ironhide’s helm. “Shut up! We weren’t supposed to tell you. Besides, given your track record he’ll probably still outlive you.”

“Weren’t supposed to tell me, eh?" Ironhide sputtered. "What’s your security clearance again? Should be revoked!” He gave Ratchet a good shove. Then he rounded on the mech just entering. “Of all the half-assed, twice-glitched, processorless…!”

“I love you too, Ironhide,” Optimus said, dusty from that day’s demolition site. 

“Get a roooooom!” Lennox howled from a workstation up on the hastily erected catwalk. Epps was already back home and didn’t have to do any more paperwork. It wasn’t fair. 

At least the debriefing had gone well. Morshower had brought in a chaplain from the Reserves to conduct it; a compassionate, flexible-minded woman who had nevertheless kept them on track. The sequence of events had been calmly whittled down to bare facts. Even Megatron’s multilayered, staggeringly long-term machinations made a revolting kind of sense. 

“Sir? The new, uh, alt modes are here.” 

A new face. Lennox leaned back in his chair, giving the young lieutenant his attention. This was the beginning; there would be massive personnel rotation now that so many NEST forces had been wiped out. 

“Thanks, Lieutenant Himes. In the future, though, you don’t have to tell me, all right? Just let the Autobots know. They’ll handle it from there.”

“Yes, sir. I…I get to talk to them?”

“Yes, you can talk to them.” Damn Mearing and her “no one works with the Autobots unless I say so.” No one works with the Autobots, no one talks to the Autobots, the Autobots can’t get an oil change unless she says so. Frag that. At least she picked good people. Himes looked eager, not freaked out. “They’re veterans, okay? Talk with them as much as you can. Cloudraker and Fastlane are coming in now, yeah, over there. You don’t have to shout, their hearing is a lot better than ours.”

Himes nodded. “Yes, sir. Autobots Cloudraker and Fastlane, new alt modes for scanning are in hangar seven.”

The kid had only raised her voice slightly. Learns fast. Lennox tossed a brief grin at Optimus, Ratchet and Ironhide and watched the twins leave for the hangar next door. 

It wasn’t hard to think of them as different people. They looked different, their voices, their mannerisms completely different. Skids and Mudflap had truly died. From the Autobots’ point of view, though, the MIA/presumed KIA status of Cloudraker and Fastlane had been rectified. 

A few moments later, the twins returned; Fastlane, his armor now a pale metallic blue, skating in a build similar to Sideswipe’s; Cloudraker stalking on a jet’s digitigrade legs. A quick poke at email gave Lennox the specs. A Porsche 918 Spyder and a Boeing Phantom Ray in USAF colors. Definitely not Skids and Mudflap.

At the hangar entrance, Bumblebee transformed, shaking off water from the hosedown Mikaela had just given him, soaking Sam. Mikaela had wisely chosen to walk in at some distance. As Sam spluttered, Bee approached the newly moded twins, whistling in appreciation as he walked a circle around them.

“Bow-chikka wow-wow! You don’t remember…anything…about Egypt…or…Petra?” Bee asked, sliding along radio frequencies with his usual flair.

The twins looked at each other, searching their memory cores. “No,” they said. As far as they were concerned, they had been to neither place. 

Bee nodded in satisfaction. “Good.”

Sam cracked up. “You’re bad, Bee.”

~>~

The notion that a great and powerful leader, thousands of years old, of a giant robotic race from an ancient spacefaring empire could ever need the help of a single, puny, squishy, twenty-two-year-old human was obviously ridiculous. Sam had thought so. Until Egypt. Now he knew better. He believed it. That’s what you had to do when you were small and fragile and very, very young. You had to believe with everything you were that you could help. Because you believed, you’d find a way. 

You couldn’t see Cybertron from the northern hemisphere, Sam knew. Even if you could spot a solitary, sunless planet, you couldn’t see Cybertron from Earth very well at all, since it lay beyond the Shapley center, blotted out by the bright, crowded stars and the savage energies of the Milky Way’s resident black hole. Optimus was stargazing again anyway.

Or maybe he was fielding super-long-distance intergalactic phone calls. It was hard to tell. Maybe both.

Sam took his time, walking out to stand beside him. Optimus’ shadow against the clear, cold night loomed painfully irregular and asymmetrical. 

“So. Megatron asking for peace,” Sam said, rapping on part of Optimus’ ankle. “That’s…new. Do you believe him? I mean, he was acting weird, there at the end.”

“The first time he called for a truce,” Optimus replied – and Sam thenceforth would define “weary” by the sound of his voice at that moment – “I accepted and he nearly killed me. The first time I called for a truce he nearly wiped the Autobots out. We have survived this long largely by hoping for peace but preparing for treachery.”

“Fool me once, shame on you…”

“…Fool me twice… Yes. But you are correct. His fields were strange, after… Perhaps without the influence of the Fallen and Sentinel, Megatron will regain some measure of…” Optimus shook his head. “I don’t know what to hope for.”

“That first thing you said was pretty good. Hope for peace. I mean, if the Fallen was such a big part of the problem, and he’s out of the picture? Which. He is, right? He’s not gonna pull a Voldemort on us or anything, right?”

The Fallen’s remains had been launched into the Sun, rather than dropped into the Laurentian. The expense of hitching that module to one of the Russian rockets supplying the ISS had been worth it, at far as Optimus was concerned. Director Galloway had approved it as well, after his change of heart. 

“I don’t think so.”

There. That was better. Optimus’ voice held a note of amusement. Sam’s next thought wasn’t as much fun.

“We’re going to forget. ‘We’ meaning us humans. You know that, right? The biggest favor the Decepticons could do themselves is just to leave us alone for twenty years. Then all the politicians will go on about how expensive the energon detectors are, and the deep space satellites and they’re going to want to look at NEST’s books. And the people are going to be more worried about their car payments or mortgages or climate change or their kids doing drugs. Except maybe in Chicago. I don’t think they’re going to forget that soon here.” Sam thought of how vividly World War II yet colored the culture of Europe. It was harder to “get over” something like that when a lot of the buildings around you still had bullet-holes. 

“Many of the other Decepticons who launched the pillars around the world may not have followed Megatron and remain at large. We will continue to hunt them.”

“And hope for peace,” Sam said. Dammit, why did the fallout after a war have to be as messy and horrible as the war itself? 

“And hope for peace.”

~>~

“You do realize it’s 0400. When did you last sleep?”

“Pot,” said Lennox, rubbing his face. “Kettle. Aren’t you supposed to report to Ratchet’s chop shop to get your arm put back on?”

“Shortly, yes.”

Lennox looked at him. The big guy didn’t exactly sound enthusiastic. “Huh. Well, I have another couple of letters to finish, and then I’m turning in.”

“Condolence letters?”

“Yeah.” For the military personnel, anyway, and damn, they’d lost a lot of them. The President had expressed his sympathy for the thousands of civilians killed in DC and Chicago via a special address on TV. Various aid funds were being set up, too; just like after 9/11. Given Chicago’s 2.7 million population, they’d been lucky. 40,000 dead, three times that injured. It could have been a lot worse. Lennox kept telling himself that.

“Does the process still comfort you?”

“…Yeah.” Lennox stood and leaned on the railing, watching Optimus closely, worried. He’d explained this after Mission City. The ritual was comforting in a way. He knew what needed doing and he did it – the only part of a mission, especially a mission gone bad, that was predictable. The families had already been notified, so the official letters often provided another layer of closure. “Do you want to…?”

“I am thinking of the civilian casualties.”

“You… there’s thousands…” Lennox blinked, then swallowed. “You’re already doing it.”

“I have compared the three main databases and eliminated repeated entries. Collecting available online public data.” Optimus refocused his optics. “I am encountering evidence indicating that electronic mail is considered less personal, less desirable than ‘snail’ mail. Would you concur?”

“Yes, but…” The logistics piled against one another in Lennox’s head. What could they use for a return address? How was Optimus going to sign them? Who was going to stamp all those envelopes? No, there were ways to print the postage directly. But stuffing envelopes and sealing them! The robots didn’t have tongues – aside from that Pretender thing. And was this going to come out of NEST’s budget? Well, so what if it did? “I’ll get you volunteers to help with the envelopes.” 

“Thank you, Will.”

~>~

“Colonel?”

“They saved the world and three of them died doing it. Give ‘em a little privacy.” At least they’d gotten a room this time. With a door that closed.

The corpsman made a noise and widened her eyes. “What are they…?”

Lennox was tired. He couldn’t tell if the noise she’d made was _ooo_ or _ew_. “It’s not like that,” he said. “They don’t… Look. It’s kinda a sweat lodge thing. Communing with the ancestors.”

“Yes, sir.”

Not that the Autobots couldn’t start their own batch of hatchlings. Lennox had wondered about that, after intel had picked up those images of Megatron’s now-abandoned camp in Namibia. Megatron had taken the hatchlings with him. Ratchet had explained that without the Allspark, the Cons had had to kill one adult for every seven hatchling sparks. It was, Lennox supposed, an acceptable tradeoff, but there weren’t that many Autobots left. 

Ratchet thought he could, given time and resources, replicate the process without killing the adult donor, but they hadn’t wanted to try it until the war was over. Bumblebee and Wheeljack (the only unbonded mechs besides Prime and the Wreckers) had each volunteered to be the first trial subject.

Lennox glanced at the closed door, wondering if that’s what they were preparing to do after all. Now that the war was maybe over. If they could trust Megatron and the Decepticons to stay tired of fighting. Or at least to stay gone. 

…

They ringed him round as Ratchet put the final welds on his shoulder, and many hands held him down as reattachment pain shot quick and reassuring through his frame. Cables slipped from wrist to wrist. In their sight and on their armor, fields rose high-winged and bright, iridescing as they overlapped and meshed, caressing one another, setting their sparks singing. Optimus lay amid them and arched as they bent their field-wings upon him, leaving no part of him untouched. The Matrix rose from his open chest, reflecting and refracting his sparklight, bathing them in unfathomable power. 

Mirage and Sideswipe, Ratchet and Ironhide held each other tenderly, chest to chest, renewing their bonds. Cloudraker and Fastlane, mercifully amnesiac, marveled as their feet lifted from the floor, and the light grew brighter and brighter. Optimus, _their_ Prime, freed them all – circle and center – from the ties of gravity. 

They lifted their heads in chorus, hardlines full-throttle, voices full-throated, Bumblebee crying out a symphony. Blue lightning rippled and flowed from helm to finial, fingertip to door-wing, arcing across the room to railings and catwalk edges, painting swirls of glyphs across every surface. 

In every wall between worlds there are doors. The ancient Primes invoked themselves through their last descendant, touching the sparks of his companions not with words but with emotions. Joy commensurate with sorrow, compassion to sear away the cruelty, serenity to balance the rage. A brief respite before plunging again into a winter full of broken buildings and the pathetic remains of humans caught in the agonal thrashing of the alien war. The Primes withdrew, leaving the Autobots what strength they could.

The circle wound and unwound, unbroken, hands reaching for hands. Gravity noticed them gradually, but they found themselves clutching at Optimus and each other as they drifted to the floor, landing in a tangle none of them were in any hurry to unknot. 

~>~

Coda

1084 years later.

This time his approach to the white-clouded water planet did not go unnoticed. They hailed him the moment he passed the heliopause. They recognized him, called him Lord Megatron. He answered their questions.

_I am here to see my brother._

They gave him a flight path which avoided most of the glittering space stations and shipping lanes by a wide margin, but they made no effort to hinder, did not deny him access. They gave him landing coordinates near the equator. The north shore of a green, volcanic island caught in the fringes of this world’s largest ocean. 

He transformed, catching a spur of rock with his clawed feet, having given up a tank-mode’s treads for more efficient flight. A clamor of scents assaulted his chemoreceptors. Organic reeks, water and salts. He thought them merely strange, exotic, rather than hateful. 

The humans were recognizably human, though their appearances were far more diverse than he recalled. Their hides were green or blue or silver now, in addition to the dirt colors they’d displayed before. Some of them had optics rather than eyes, and a few had wings or tails. Tiny hands pointed him along a serpentine path wide enough for even mechs his size to walk.

Mountains rose steeply ahead, green-clad and misty. Megatron climbed the sloping path amid trees and flowers and carved stone shapes whose meanings escaped him. Until farther on, where some of the stone shapes resembled Cybertronians, or at least bore a resemblance to Cybertronian geometries. At the end of the path was a garden. Not crystals, but plants, arranged in circles and bordered by pools of the ubiquitous water. Even the water had green things in it, which thrust colorful shapes upward as if attempting to escape a liquid doom.

In the center of the garden, on a circular stone pavement, sat his brother.

The narrow, triangular face was the same, blue optics and a kind smile, bordered in cobalt, but the heavy helm was gone. His frame was slender and light, like an ancient’s, designed to put minimal strain on a fading spark. 

Megatron knelt, taking the thin hands extended to him. “Optimus! What have they done to you?”

Optimus laughed softly. “I did this to myself, brother.” He tugged, and Megatron shifted closer. “It’s good to see you.” 

“I’ve come to bring you and your people home. We’ve rebuilt Iacon and Kalis, Polyhex and Praxus. And others.” The cities weren’t living cities as they had once been, but people lived in them. There was energy for light and warmth. 

“I am home,” Optimus said. “I waited for you. Show me your cities.”

Megatron extended an arm. The garden of Earth shivered and melted, light etching angular images in its place; the view wheeling and swooping as the recorder had flown. Smaller, less ambitious shapes nested in the bones of grander structures. Younglings worked alongside older mechs, hatchlings clinging to their shoulders. Light and warmth came from below; in the deeps of the planet fusion engines had been ignited. Their “sun” now shone within. The new Cybertronian empire would be self-reliant and self-contained. 

As the holo faded, Megatron realized Optimus had fallen into recharge. Megatron shook him gently, pinging alarmed queries. A brightly colored mech, taller and leaner than Megatron remembered, approached them and knelt. 

“What happened to him?” Megatron hissed, wrapping his arms around Optimus as though that could fend off the changes. 

“He gave of his spark to revive Ironhide and the twins Sentinel killed,” Bumblebee explained, his voice at last whole, if threaded with sadness. 

“He’s _dying_? Where’s Ratchet?!”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Ratchet said, emerging from the path winding from the foot of the mountain. “There’s nothing wrong with him aside from extreme old age.” More and more mechs gathered, some Megatron knew, many he didn’t. More Autobots had come to Earth, but there were younglings as well, barely into their first adult frames. The new mechs knelt or sat, silent and watchful but unthreatening. 

After a time, Optimus awoke. He did not lift his head from Megatron’s shoulder.

“I waited for you. Wanted to give you this.” Optimus opened his chest. The Matrix floated free, rising toward Megatron’s astonished optics. 

“But,” Megatron said, not reaching for it. “Primes are born, not made, you said. Your own people, won’t they…?”

“They don’t need it,” Optimus said, chuckling. “I thought you might, though.” The Matrix wafted closer, glowing warmly. Megatron lifted a hand, felt strange fields wind around his arm. Optimus’ engine gave a thrum then went quiet. His optics were shuttered and lightless. 

“No… No! Till all are one! You and your people were going to join us! We were to be one people again!”

“Most will indeed join you on Cybertron,” said Bumblebee. “Some will stay here. This is also our home.”

Megatron scarcely heard him. “He’s fading! It wasn’t supposed to be him! That’s not how it works. Not him!” He shook Optimus, harder this time. “You won, Optimus! You can’t leave me, not yet. Not yet!” Optimus’ hands slipped loose into his lap. With one arm, Megatron crushed Optimus to his chest, raising the Matrix high with the other. “ _I won’t let you!_ ”

…

_You were so small, Optimus. Do you remember? So small when I found you. The Thetacons’ bomb uncovered the crypt; your egg was damaged. You could barely chirp when I pulled you out. Sentinel must have known what you were. He told me you would be my brother, that I had to protect you. My first duty._

_I’ve raised so many hatchlings, I’ve almost forgotten how frightening it was that first time. You learned to speak early. We soon wished you hadn’t, Sentinel and I – you never stopped asking **why?** Stubborn little monster. _

_How dare you give up now!_

…

“With a will like that, you’re a hazard,” Optimus said, laughing. He stood beside Megatron, tall and whole, a steel-blue protoform. Energies had been wrested from between dimensions, time torn out by the roots; channeled and directed into spark and body. (Ripples of havoc spread through the universes – Vector Prime shook his head in dismay, but assured his last descendant the effects were repairable.)

“You must be my check and balance,” Megatron agreed. “Which means you have to stick around.”

_When my time comes,_ Optimus said over their private frequency, _you won’t be able to stop me again._

_When **our** time comes, I won’t have to. But not until then, slag you!_ “Here.” Megatron offered the Matrix back. It was a horrible Prime thing, damn their meddling. 

Optimus waved a hand, moving away to embrace Bee. “It’s a powerful artifact. Keep it safe.” Even his voice was young. Ratchet and Ironhide came forward - grinning, though Ironhide shook his head in fond exasperation - surrounded by a cadre of young mechs who did not look like them, but moved like them, whose fields felt like theirs. Wheeljack took Bee’s hand and Sideswipe and Mirage skated a little whirly circle, similarly encompassed. 

“But…” Megatron noticed the Autobots grinning at him, a few even chuckling, though not unkindly.

“Told you, I don’t need it. Might do you some good.” Optimus spread his fields to envelop everyone, robot and human and those between. _I will return,_ he assured them as he strode to Megatron’s side.

“To Cybertron?”

“To Cybertron.” They transformed and took to the air, twin jets climbing hard to the stars.


End file.
